Which is a favourite side quest of yours?
I like the way you phrased this. A favorite quest. Doesn't have to be the favorite (and good thing, there's a lot of contenders), leaves the door open to revisit the question in the future. Just talk about one quest I particularly like.
I like a lot of the quests. I mean, I think I could find something to say about almost all of them, but some are certainly doing more than others. If y'all start asking about specific quests, I think it would not be unlike the thing I do on my Thomas the Tank Engine sideblog feature where I try to teach people how to appreciate the CGI era but sometimes I'm left strugglin' when the episode is shallow (but I always come up with something).
On the other hand, my initial choice was going to be "Old Soldiers", except that really that quest is really also "Gland of Hope and Glory" and "A Dead Man's Best Friend" too. I suppose I could just talk about the first one on its own; it's got enough to work with.
But how about one that's pretty self-contained?
I'm gonna go with "Cathouse".
So the premise of this quest is that Lionel has sent Ollie to Thomasina House to steal three onyx cat statues (these being distinct from the marble one Arthur was sent to steal). Straight off, this is interesting design wise. Many of the simpler side quests are shared between characters with only minor dialogue changes between them. Quests like "Flower Picking", "Bring Out Your Dead", "Wild Picnic", basically anything where it's not inconceivable that any or all of our main characters could easily progress through the same simple plot without many changes.
This was also originally the case for some of the more complex quests. "Constant Gardeners", for instance, has a slightly different concept in Poedit for a version of the quest for Sally that would have made it much more explicit that Margery Flowerdew was her aunt. When you get into actual story quests rather than loot opportunities, it starts to beg the question of why those characters would go through the same experience with more than one of our protagonists.
Anyway, point is, you might think you're going to repeat the same quest that Arthur was tasked with... except that Ollie lacks Arthur's stealth skills. Practically speaking, you could probably still sneak as Ollie, no accoutrements or nothin'. It really is just a matter of staying out of sight. But this quest does not permit this. The objectives of this quest require an upfront approach.
Ironically, what Ollie lacks in stealth skills, he makes up for in people skills. Funnily enough, this is also written into the canon: he was a former "song and dance" man and is a passable actor as well, not unlike Arthur if he's talking to other men. Ollie's talents - fortunately - have no gender restrictions.
While it is a bit OP, I do generally do most of Ollie's playthrough in the boiler suit (I find the maid's uniform visually distracting). If you do too, you might not know that the Criers won't let you in when wearing anything else. If you knock on the door wearing the maid uniform, for instance, they have this line to shoo you away.
We don't want to buy anything! We already have a religion! Charity begins at home! Goodbye!
You could write that off as just denial of sales tactics, but given that they actually do have a religion (witchcraft), one could read into that a bit. I have a chapter in my WIP file about Reverend Charles Peter developing joy intolerance and part of that story based on this line involved a joint effort on the part of the various local clergymen to convert the Thomasina House Criers away from paganism. As a symptom of his growing Joy intolerance, Peter sees Eyes on the Criers, leading him to believe this is God marking those who need his help.
Obviously this intervention wouldn't have taken; what do any of those religions have to offer women? But that whole sub-idea comes from this one line.
So you put your boiler suit on and now the ladies are quite pleased to have a strapping young-old repairman on their doorstep. They make him wait outside for a moment while they purposely break a few things in the house for him to fix.
I know you're still waiting on the Lightbearer stuff, but I did take a hot second to go grab the lines for this quest for us. There was only a couple removed scenes and only one major rearrangement, so we didn't really lose much of the original intent.
Upon being shown the broken refrigerator, Ollie had this small exchange for the event that he didn't have the parts on hand to make the repair kit for it.
046 PC_Ollie I'll have to step out for some parts.
048 WellF Come back soon!
050 Meg I think she fancies you.
052 PC_Ollie Don't be ridiculous. They're much older than I.
We know the Criers a bit better than Ollie at this point, having listened to their comparative analysis of their favorite bobbies in Arthur's Act, so we know Meg is on the money here. If you've read How to be Happy, you also know that canonically Thomasina House is located within ogling distance of the constabulary exercise yard.
The lines in Poedit have the scene with the toilet before the Popper, suggesting the quest was written before the set piece was designed or that the writers just didn't have access to it yet.
There were a few lines removed from the dialogue after you repair the toilet.
084 PC_Ollie There. That should work now, if ye ever need company.
086 WellF We like your company!
088 PC_Ollie Anything else need fixin'? Maybe something in that locked bedroom?
090 WellF Ohhhhh… we're all out of broken things.
092 WellF Maybe more things will be broken next week!
094 PC_Ollie I'm sure the cats are in there. But how am I supposed to get into the bedroom?
096 Meg I think you know exactly how to get into their bedroom.
098 PC_Ollie Hoo. That'll require a wee dutch courage.
100 WellF We've made you tea and watercress sandwiches! You must stay for tea. You simply must!
I think these two bits were removed because they make Meg a little too knowing. Which is to say, being this aware and astute about the situation is quite precocious for a twelve-year-old girl, but not for the imaginary friend of a man in his 50's. It might've given away the game too early if Meg is seen to be too comfortable alluding that closely to what Ollie's going to have to do here. What remains of her input on the situation in the final game is a lot more distant: she merely comments that Ollie is bad at taking hints and later says she does not want to talk about what he had to do to get the cat statues.
And so things... come to a head.
The Criers invite Ollie to stay for tea and there we get the best animation in the game
So in game design, there are rewards like loot and skill upgrades and unlockables, etc, you know, quantifiable things you get for progressing in the game. There is a further idea though - and I very much believe in this, so much that I think it can even carry game on their own - that things like this are also rewards. This absolutely filthy animation of the player character's finger suggestively stroking the neck of a Scotch bottle, putting extra pressure on to show how hard it is, that is only used once in the entire game: this is a reward for successfully doing everything you need to do to get to this point.
'Cause think about it. You have to get through this without alerting anyone or causing a panic, probably the number one way this quest gets ruined. Beyond that, you also have to five Advanced Machine Bits (which means you need to either buy them from Lionel or know to be extracting from Dud German Bombs in anticipation of this quest) as well as two regular Mechanical Bits, three Metal bits, two rolls of Duct Tape, and two Metal Tubes. Completing this quest takes patience, awareness of one's surroundings, discipline to keep your grabby hands out of drawers until time, and considerable resource collection.
I couldn't tell you what quantifiable reward the game gives you for this quest because the only thing I give a fuck about having received for it is this raunchy animation of Ollie assuring three women that he's enough Scotch for all of them.
I learned another thing about this digging out the lines in Poedit.
See, I had thought that this animation was just one of many in a "pack" of animations that player arms can do. That this animation could be done by any player character theoretically, but that they only used it specifically for Ollie in this moment just because they had it and it was too good not to see at least once. But I don't actually think that's true anymore.
Because this cutscene around the tea table... is actually cinematic. It's pre-rendered.
I hadn't noticed before because usually a scene is pre-rendered in this game because the scene is supposed to be particularly important and the character you're speaking to needs to do more than use the stock of shared body animations. The DLC's have many more cinematic scenes like this, but in the main game, they're generally used for emphasis, to mark the most important story beats. They're not often used in side quests because those are optional.
Sometimes in those pre-rendered cutscenes, the player character also has custom animations for specific movements as well. Arthur putting his glasses on after escaping the motilene mines, Sally's little dance for General Byng or pretending to pour him a drink and hitting him with the bottle, Ollie's assembling the hot air balloon.
And this.
I now think this was not just an animation they had and wanted to use, but that they specifically made this animation for this scene. That they thought this scene was important enough that it needed to be a cinematic. I might even go so far as to suggest that this scene is only cinematic for the purpose of doing this animation, that this animation is the entire reason for this scene and the Crier animations were an afterthought.
I'd missed it all this time because the Criers aren't doing anything like characters in other cinematics do. There's none of Verloc's dynamic physical comedy or the player's viewport tracking General Byng's menacing movement around his office. If you look closely, though, you can see the Criers doing custom movements. The one on the right particularly is fluffing her hair and stroking her chest. The one on the left gesticulates with her teacup a bit later in the scene.
Their movement is so subtle and the fact that they stand around awkwardly rather than sit (which there is a stock animation for)... it's is almost as if this scene were disguised as a normal in-world cutscene, making it a reward for only the kind of person who appreciates this sort of thing, seeing how the magic trick works.
There's one last thing I think is really fun about this quest. When the idea that he's gonna have to fuck these ladies to get into that bedroom becomes clear, he acts as though he's loath to do it in the removed lines. And I think based on the rest, it's not because he finds the idea repulsive but because he thinks it's going to be asking a lot of luck. In that cut bit of dialogue early in the quest, he writes the idea off entirely because these ladies are so much older than him. He misses the cue about his nimble hands and has to be told what she's getting at. If you try the door before you're invited in, one of the Criers will mention "how many services you provide", which Ollie ignores/misses again. He seems to find the idea that anyone would find him attractive preposterous, let alone women who I suppose he must think are beyond the age for it.
There's a very interesting dynamic present here. Ollie is here to steal from these women, to take advantage of their age and ostensible helplessness, but they in turn want something from him and have conspired together to force him into a position to at least propose it. This is a situation that coulda read in much less satisfying ways, but it was written with such balance that it's just a fun romp!
The lines for the cinematic in Poedit are titled CIN_Ollie_Gets_Seduced_ALL. Ollie gets seduced. Not the other way around. lol.
And to top it off, the delivery on his line directly following the fade-to-black...
118 PC_Ollie I suppose that's not the worst thing that's happened to me since my house fell down.
...actually sounds quite pleased with this turn of events, pleased with his own performance even. Like, I think it's quite cool that he ends the quest with that attitude. It could just as easily ended in "Ugh, I had to fuck three old ladies, gross" but no! It's "Well, that wasn't half bad!" And the quest finishes with everyone (even Meg if you leave them some money) happy.
Good shit!